Chapter 5 #3
After lunch, we moved over to a grassy clearing and lay down in the dappled shade, still tuned to the mountain.
Was anything happening now? No, I told myself.
Nothing was happening. We were just two nature lovers, enjoying some quiet on a warm mountainside.
It was summer, and this was what people did in the summer.
It was what I’d do with anyone. If Phil were here, we’d all be doing this together.
We heard dragonflies whirring, bird wings flapping, the wind flowing through the soft needles of the trees.
We heard a beetle scratching in the dirt.
The water made a constant, calm background chatter, and the longer we listened, the more nuance we could hear in the stream’s voice.
We heard the water stroking the bed, wearing the rocks smoother and smoother, the occasional small rock rolling into a new placement.
We heard the sun hitting the water, the sound of light tangling in the ropy current.
We remained still and listened to the blood in our own bodies, the hum of electricity in our nerves.
The silence continued to ramify. We found rooms of silence inside the silence.
We almost laughed a few times but we stayed quiet and kept listening until the forest seemed to forget we were there.
A deer appeared in the tree break across the stream, browsing the leaves.
We heard a dry rasping noise in the long grass that turned out to be a garter snake slithering through.
It was an adorable little guy, with black and red patterning; tiny, shining dots for eyes; a flashing, elegant tongue. Off it went, happy to be free.
Still we were silent, breathing the scent of sun-warmed sap and cedar.
Sarah rocked up onto her knees and leaned over to pluck a few blades of grass, allowing the neckline of her blouse to gape.
I saw the curve of her breast cupped in her beige bra, not quite the edge of her aureole.
She took a blade of grass and placed it gently between her teeth and dragged it out to dredge the droplet of milk from the stem.
She tossed the blade and picked a few more.
She handed me one and I bit gently on the milky tip. It tasted bitter and clean.
How do you know when something is actually happening?
When you’ve waited long enough? How do you know when enough pressure has built up?
You might feel something jangling in the airwaves, some invitation, but you’re never sure if you’re reading the air right.
Maybe the other person doesn’t understand the signals they’re sending.
The invitation is only ever half an invitation anyway.
It can be rescinded at any moment. This was definitely a vague invitation.
But it seemed like the moment had arrived.
The moment when everything hidden came into view.
Sarah was looking directly into my face.
She was close enough now that I could hear her breath and see the tiny pulse of her heart in her neck.
I shifted my weight and leaned closer and she leaned closer and closed her eyes.
Our lips touched. We pulled away, both in mild terror.
And then, before saying a word, before a doubt, we went back again.
Our lips touched and touched again, and the pulsation I’d felt at the party flared everywhere in my body, a warm, welcoming current spreading through my limbs.
My hands went to her arms, her shoulders.
They slid under her blouse, and I felt the softness of her back, the heft of her breast. My thumb traced her nipple through her bra’s fabric and then drifted up the neckline to trace her jaw and massage the warmth behind her ear.
Was this happening? It seemed unbelievable, and yet also somehow not unbelievable at all.
It occurred to me that Sarah and Phil might have some kind of agreement between them.
This might even be a normal thing for her.
She was the child of free love, after all.
Maybe she lacked all the hang-ups and guilt reflexes around the body’s natural wants that I had.
In any case, I assumed she knew what she was doing. It wasn’t the moment to distract her.
Her skirt came off and turned into a sheet on the grass. The earth became our bed. As we lay beside each other, kissing and caressing, I remained in complete awe that I’d been granted this permission. And it was more than permission. She had the same hunger I did.
Eagerly, we stripped off each other’s clothes.
My pale, hairy body came into view, harshly exposed, but she didn’t seem to care.
I definitely didn’t judge the stray hairs or cellulite on her part.
Not as she slid off her panties, and her black pubic bush appeared, with the fading trail leading to her belly button, and the shadowy cleft of her pussy.
In those amazing moments, although she was breaking her wedding vows, and I was lying with my friend’s wife, we were bizarrely unconflicted.
We were two animals in a forest, feeding our bodies what they craved.
Feeling her hands on my neck, her breath against my cheek, I told myself that we were doing nothing wrong.
In fact, this was exactly what we were born to do.
The sex that afternoon was awkward at first. We were extra decorous with each other, seeking permissions, pausing to reposition or to move a fallen twig.
I tongued circles around her nipples while she stroked me, and then she straddled my legs and explored my chest and neck.
Our roles reversed again and I kissed a dotted line all the way down her rib cage to her curving hip.
She clasped my fingers as I reached the silkiness of her inner thigh, and when I came to her labia I kissed them lightly along the seam, then parted them with my tongue, tasting the hot honey oil inside. Far away, I heard her gasp.
And then it wasn’t so decorous at all. I kissed my way back to her mouth and she guided me inside her.
I pushed my cock into her pussy gently a few times, almost questioningly, and then less so, until we found our rhythm.
We proceeded to make love there in the sun on the mountainside in a state of stunned gratitude, giving ourselves over mindlessly to the moment and its sweet, wet, shared breath.
It went by in a delicious blur, as it does, except for a single instant that stood out even at the time.
The instant came in the throes of our fucking.
I was staring into Sarah’s half-lidded eyes, moving fluidly inside her, when I almost whispered out loud that I loved her.
We weren’t remotely at that point yet. It would have been utterly absurd and premature to say those words.
And yet I could feel myself wanting to utter them.
And I thought I felt her wanting to as well.
And then, blissfully, the wanting was over, and we were done.
Afterward, we lay in the grass, legs entwined.
My paunch married easily with the depression of her hip, and her head found a nice resting place on my shoulder.
For a while, we didn’t talk at all. We weren’t second-guessing anything yet, or making any plans.
We were simply lying there, touching each other’s eyebrows and lips, occasionally kissing, letting the summer wind blow over us.
But it wasn’t long before the mental backchannels began opening, and practical questions started to circulate.
I could sense Sarah’s worries forming. What was she going to say to Phil when she got home?
What lies was she going to have to tell?
And what would I say when I saw him next?
We were only seconds out from the act, and already the reality was starting to tighten around us like a noose.
Her skirt was a mess on the ground, and she propped herself up and started to brush off the dirt and push out the wrinkles, erasing the clues.
“Are you… okay?” I said at last.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine.”
She kept brushing at her skirt, turning it around, looking for stray stains. She seemed to be making a point of not looking at me. I wanted to be there for her, if possible, and help her through whatever was going through her mind. I could see that on my side it wasn’t as bad.
“What are you thinking?” I said.
“I’m just… I don’t know,” she said.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No.”
“That was kind of surprising, wasn’t it?” I said after a pause. “Kind of unexpected.”
“Are you that surprised?” she said. “Really?”
“Sort of. But maybe not totally surprised, I guess. Are you?”
“I guess I’m both of those things, too.”
She found another spot on her skirt and wetted her finger to wipe it out.
“I’ll admit,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
“Uh-huh?” she said. “When did you start thinking about it?”
“I’m not quite sure. A while.”
“Oh, come on. You can tell me.”
I started picking strands of grass off my legs. “The first day I talked to you, I suppose,” I said. “Driving out to the meadow that first time. That’s when it started for me. How about you?”
She thought for a moment, squinting at the sun-filled clouds. She sighed, not unhappily. “After our walk in the park, I thought about it,” she said.
“And when did you decide it was going to happen?” I said.
“What makes you think I decided?” she said.
“It just seems like you were the one in charge,” I said.
She laughed. “You’re the one who took me to this creek,” she said. “You made the noodles.”
“I had no idea this was going to happen!” I said. “I mean, I’ve been thinking about it, but I didn’t think it was ever actually going to happen.”
“Thinking, wanting, plotting,” she said. “What’s the difference?”
“People think a lot of things that never happen,” I said.
“But they only really want a few things,” she said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t want this.”
“Oh no,” I said. “I wanted it.”
“So did I,” she said, and leaned over and kissed me softly. And then we sat and listened to the wind in the leaves.
“Maybe no one decided,” I said wishfully. “Maybe it just happened by itself.”
“If only that were true,” she said, and started putting on her skirt.
We drove home listening to classic country music on the radio.
The late-afternoon sky was tousled with clouds.
The mood in the car was calm, with accents of melancholy creeping in.
We didn’t feel the need to burden ourselves with too many interpretations or expectations just yet.
We’d acknowledged that we’d conjured this event into being, that we’d dreamed it, and done it, and now there was no taking it back, but about the future, we had nothing to say.
We climbed over the mountains back into Oregon, overtaking giant trucks paused on the shoulder, resting on the steep grade.
I took Sarah’s hand and passed a brushing kiss over her knuckles.
She put her hand in her lap and turned back to her window.
The moon was rising on the horizon. Already, it felt like Phil was in the car, witnessing our every gesture.